So much love, a window seat in the sun in a kitchen full of story, a gaggle of chickens, time (the sort that seeks to fill the hour not the year), flowers spilling out from bright corners, a chair placed just so. Life with kids free as birds on a rope swing, with dogs that found you as much as you found them, and a storybook pony, and jelly slice sweet on your tongue. Life with the kindest heart-centred children, because you showed them how to be so. The luck that is borne of hard work, the daily side-by-side in the muddy ruts, that builds the beautiful dream. Open fields to lose yourself in, and the dearest hearts to find you again. Bales of fresh hay between the earth and the sky. The horizon that hears laughter and tears, and holds them both beautiful.

Look after the pennies, look after the pennies, the secret is not in the pounds.

I’ve got about a half a dozen things half started over here: poems and writings than may never see the light of day, books part-read and theories half drafted and endless lists of ideas and thoughts that are important to me, ones that I’d like to sit with and explore and doodle about and just generally research and ruminate on for a few hundred hours. Trouble is, I still don’t actually have hundreds of hours

But of all my to-dos and should-dos and want-to-dos, this is what more often than not floats to the top, these photographs that I make for people. Simple, heartfelt family photographs that with the greatest ease and gentlest voice persistently remind that deep doesn’t have to mean anything other than deeply felt. It doesn’t have to be dark, or complicated or intense, or overtly artsy or be otherwise signposted as deep in the ways we have come to expect depth sometimes to present itself.

These photos have taught me, and continue to teach, so much.

Going deep is paying attention, it’s taking the eye we reserve for high art and letting it fall on the scene right in front of us. It’s the little pile of bricks you have witnessed magic in, it’s the ever-expanding space between their small warm bodies and yours, it’s the little tears you mop up because life is confusing and unfair and tricky sometimes, here as anywhere.

If we do one thing well, let it be this, and then if we also find time for the higher things, the literature and podcasts and works in oil, let them be informed by all the things we already learned at home.

//Sarah Black is one of Melbourne and the Mornington Peninsula's most sought after family and newborn baby photographers. If you are interested in finding out more about commissioning a natural, soulful photography session to capture this time in the life of your family, children or a newborn baby, either in your own home or on location anywhere in Melbourne, please get in touch here. Weekends book out around 6 weeks in advance (weekday times are more readily available), so if you are considering booking a session then please get in touch asap to reserve your date.//